François Chopart

François Chopart, a native Parisian, was the son of Francois Turlure and Marie-Anne Chopart, whose name he took and used all through his life. He received his medical training at the Hôtel-Dieu under Jean-Nicolas Moreau (died 1786), and at the Pitié and the Bicêtre. In 1767 he received a prize from the Academy of Surgery for his treatise Essai sur les loupes. In 1768 he received a prize for the treatise Memoire sur les lésions de la tête, par contre-coup. This was also the topic of his dissertation for the title og Maître de chirurgie, which he received on July 20, 1770. The following year he was appointed as professor of practical surgery at the école pratique.

On March 13, 1782 he succeeded Toussaint Bordenave (1728-1782) in the chair of physiology.

Chopart travelled to London twice. Once to accompany a patient, the second time as an education to study the surgery in England. During these visits to England he made the friendship of John Hunter (1728-1793) and they began a prolific correspondence.

François Chopart died in a cholera epidemic in 1795.

• Essai sur les loupes. 1767 (Prix de l’Académie de chirurgie)
• Mémoire sur les contrecoups dans les lésions de la tête. 1768.
  Translated into Latin by himself as: De laesionibus capitis per ictus repercusos, and in 1770 used by him as a dissertation for obtaining the dignity of a Magister.
• Traité des maladies chirurgicales et des opérations qui leur conviennent.
  With Pierre Joseph Desault (1744-1795). 2 volumes. 1780. 2nd edition, An 4, with an Éloge Desault’s by Marie Francois Xavier Bichat (1771-1802); German translation in 2 volumes, Leipzig, 1783; Vienna, 1784.
• Traité des maladies des voies urinaires.
  2 volumes, Paris : J. B. Baillière, 1791-1792.
  Nouvelle édition avec des notes et un Mémoire sur les pierres de la vessie et sur l’lithotomie, pour E.-H.-Félix Pascal, 1821.
  Chopart and Pierre Joseph Desault (1744-1795) were the founders of urological surgery, both emphasizing the importance of treating the urinary tract as a whole. "They were close friends and were both able clinicians, surgeons and teachers. Desault was a brilliant lecturer who wrote little while Chopart, a poor speaker, published an outstanding textbook on urology" (Desnos, transl. Murphy). Biographical
• Richard Toellner:
  Illustrierte Geschichte der Medizin. Andreas & Andreas Verlag, Salzburg, 1990.
  Original title: Histoire de la Médicine, de la Pharmacie, de l'Art Dentaire et de l'Art Vétérinaire. Paris 1978.
• August Hirsch (1817-1894), publisher:
  Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Ärzte aller Zeiten und Völker.
  2nd edition. Berlin, Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1929.
  First published in 6 volumes 1884-1888. 3rd edition, München 1962.
• Jeremy M. Norman, editor:
  Morton’s Medical Bibliography. An annotated Check-list of Texts Illustrating the History of Medicine (Garrison and Morton).
  Fifth edition. Scolar Press, 1991.
• Ira M. Rutkow:
  Surgery – an Illustrated History. Mosby-Year Book, Inc. 1993.
• Jörn Henning Wolf:
  François Chopart (1743-1795) - Erfinder der partiellen Fußamputation in der Articulatio tarsi transversa.
  Operative Orthopädie und Traumatologie, München, December 2000, 12 (4): 341-344.